S.W.A.T.
RATING: PG-13
STARRING: Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Farrell, Jeremy Renner, Michelle Rodriguez, James Todd Smith aka LL Cool J, and Oliver Martinez
DIRECTOR: Clark Johnson
PRODUCERS: Neal H. Mortiz, Dan Haslted and Chris Lee
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Louis D'Esposito
WRITERS: David Ayer and David McKenna
DISTRIBUTOR: Columbia Pictures/Sony
GENRE: Police Thriller
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Teenagers and adults
SUMMARY: In S.W.A.T., Colin Farrell plays Jim Street, a S.W.A.T. officer temporarily kicked off the force because of a stunt his partner pulled in shooting a bank robber. A veteran cop named Hondo, played by Samuel L. Jackson, is brought back from another precinct to build a new team and fix the problems. Along with training two new members, he decides to give Street a chance. After the normal friction, they become a well-trained team taking on adventure and evildoers like a French drug lord who will pay $100 million to anyone who will free him. The S.W.A.T. team is tasked with moving him from the local prison to a more secure location in the desert.
S.W.A.T. is well-made, fairly well-acted, and, though some of the characters are a little wooden/stereotypical, it is fun to watch Colin Farrell and Samul L. Jackson on screen. S.W.A.T. espouses loyalty, teamwork, family, and, for the most part, following the law, but there is enough light sexual innuendo and course jesting to keep it a movie for older teenagers and adults.
CONTENT: Humanist worldview portraying "might rules," but secondary moral truths espoused (evil does not win out in the end, loyalty, teamwork, family, etc.); moderate language with about 15 obscenities and four strong profanities; intense action violence with murder, shooting, cutting with knife, fighting, etc.; no sex, but some light innuendo; no nudity; some portrayals of drinking and smoking; and, lying, gambling, and deception.
Step Into Liquid
RATING: Not Rated
STARRING: Kelly Slater, Rochelle Ballard, Rob Machado, Keala Kennelly, Taj Burrow, and a host of other professional and amateur surfers
DIRECTOR: Dana Brown
PRODUCER: John-Paul Beeghly
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Bruce Brown and Ray Willenberg, Jr.
WRITER: Dana Brown
DISTRIBUTOR: Artisan Entertainment
GENRE: Documentary
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Older children to adults
SUMMARY: Step Into Liquid is as exhilarating and refreshing as a summer day at the beach, and at times as exasperating as the long, sandy drive home. Through a series of loosely connected vignettes, Dana Brown showcases some of the finest surfers and most spectacular waves in the world. Numerous interviews feature world champions of the sport attempting to distill the essence of surfing's allure. Their shallow and sometimes silly explanations cannot match the grandeur and majesty of their subject.
Breathtaking surf footage is the staple of surfing movies, and Brown treats his audience to lavish slow motion and fast motion sequences. In settings as exotic as Costa Rica, Vietnam, and Tahiti, world-class athletes perform impossible moves shot from every conceivable angle, even underwater. Thanks to fine sound editing, viewers experience the thunder of giant waves off Maui and San Diego as expert surfers are towed into the swells by jet skis. Despite its weaknesses, Christians will appreciate the majesty of the creation depicted so effectively in the surfing sequences in Step Into Liquid. Perhaps, they may understand surf culture more deeply, too, the better to minister to surfers.
CONTENT: Pagan worldview with characters attributing mystical qualities to natural elements while some characters perform biblical acts of charity and peacemaking, including uniting some Protestant and Catholic surfers; five uses of "God" as exclamations and 12 mild to coarse obscenities; and, characters refer to global brotherhood of surfing and vague anti-capitalist environmentalism.
